A Federal Court judge has criticised Volkswagen for being “uncooperative” in refusing to tell the court who authorised the defeat device at the heart of the auto giant’s diesel emissions cheating scandal.
AMP has prevailed in a hard-fought fight over where it will defend five shareholder class actions brought in the wake of the Banking Royal Commission, in a precedent-setting judgement that provides a road map for future jurisdictional battles over competing class actions.
A file note from a Herbert Smith Freehills lawyer is protected by legal professional privilege, a judge has ruled, shooting down a claim by the CFMMEU that the note may have been part of an unlawful scheme to block its merger with two other unions.
A pro bono class action on behalf of asylum seekers who allege they were unlawfully imprisoned in Australian immigration detention centres has been shut down by the Federal Court, which ruled Monday it had no jurisdiction to hear the proceeding.
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia is seeking to strike out portions of a shareholder class action over allegedly lax anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism financing controls it calls a “vague penumbra” that leaves the bank in the dark about the case against it.
Chain logistics company Brambles is facing a second class action alleging it breached its continuous disclosure obligations by failing to revise its overly rosy 2017 financial forecast on several occasions.
Embattled financial giant AMP on Tuesday criticised concerns raised by lawyers for the federal class actions about group members’ opt out rights, saying the concerns were a “red herring” in the fight against an order transferring their cases to the NSW Supreme Court.
AMP has slammed arguments that group members in four Federal Court class actions could face a jurisdictional limitation on their claims of disclosure breaches if their cases are transferred to state court, saying no such disadvantage exists.
The Federal Court offers group members in the shareholder class actions against AMP a major legal advantage over the NSW Supreme Court, lawyers for the federal cases have argued ahead of a hearing in the controversial jurisdictional battle.
Slater and Gordon has filed a shareholder class action against Brambles over its allegedly misleading and overly rosy 2017 financial forecasts, beating rival Maurice Blackburn to the punch almost 10 months after it announced it was investigating a shareholder class action against the logistics company.